Members of LGBTQ community stage a ‘marriage’ between three men and a dog during a protest against Boris Johnson (WIktor Szymanowicz/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
LGBT+ activists have staged a protest against homophobia outside Downing Street over Boris Johnson’s refusal to apologise for historical anti-LGBT remarks.
Dozens of activists gathered outside the gates of Downing Street on Saturday for the ‘Bum Boys against Boris’ protest, just days ahead of the Thursday’s UK general election.
Protesters carried signs bearing actual quotes from the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who has ignored calls to apologise on the election trail for his past remarks towards the LGBT+ community.
Wedding between ‘three men and a dog’ protests Conservative leader
In a reference to one of Johnson’s pejorative remarks, the protesters staged a mock wedding between three men and a dog, who were declared “man and woof” by an officiant.
The event organisers explained: “Boris Johnson wants your vote on December 12, but what has he done for us lately?
“He once attacked, ‘Labour’s appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools’. He referred to gay people as ‘tank topped bumboys’, in an article celebrating the resignation of a politician that had not publicly come out yet.
“And whilst queer activists fought another civil rights battle in the form of the campaign for equal marriage, he concluded, ‘if gay marriage was OK… then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog’. ”
The protest was backed by Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, London Bi Pandas, ACT UP London and Kick Boris Out.
Pressure grows as more anti-LGBT remarks from Boris Johnson resurface
The Daily Mirror published more resurfaced anti-LGBT remarks from Johnson’s time as a journalist surfaced on Monday.
In a Spectator column penned in 1999, he wrote: “Across the country, there are many Tories who wish their party leadership would speak up more strongly against, say, gays in the military (…) They are, of course, right.”
In 2008, he also expressed sympathy for Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe’s homophobic attacks on the British Labour Party.
He wrote that Mugabe “has fatally lost sympathy after he said that New Labour was composed of ‘gay gangsters’ (though, ahem, you could say there was grit of truth in that observation).”
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: “The more we learn, the worse it gets. As well as being a danger to our NHS and a pathological liar, it is clear that Boris Johnson is a deeply unpleasant individual.
“He is a danger to women, to single mothers, the working class, minorities, gay people, and to anyone who doesn’t look like him. He thinks he is born to rule and stands against everything that holds our communities together.
“Boris Johnson is a danger to our country. He must be stopped.”